Early in 2008—before the economy started acting up—the New York Times published a special issue of its Sunday magazine—the Money Issue, though it might equally well have been called the “Good” Issue. Its cover package touted various strategies for transforming money into social good—and in some serendipitous cases, back into money! The pièce de résistance was an article by Jon Gertner—”For Good Measure”—surveying contemporary practices of philanthropic foundations.

Gertner’s prediction was that “philanthropy’s golden age is yet to come,” which seemed accurate at the time. Giving in the United States had reached record highs, jumping 32 percent between 2002 and 2006. Figures from 2007 put private giving, for the first time in history, over $300 billion. These figures include gifts from individuals, corporations, nonprofits, and foundations to arts and cultural organizations, religious organizations, ecological (and certainly a few anti-ecological) causes, labor causes...

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